Portable electronic devices including, for example, smart telephones and wireless PDAs are becoming increasingly common and typically integrate functions of personal information management such as calendaring and data communications such as email, World Wide Web browsing and telecommunications in a single device. Such devices run on a wide variety of networks from data-only networks such as Mobitex and DataTAC to complex voice and data networks such as GSMIGPRS, CDMA, EDGE, UMTS AND CDMA2000 networks.
Calendar applications permit the user of the portable electronic device to schedule and review calendared events such as appointments and meetings on a visual display such as a liquid crystal display (LCD) screen. Calendared events can typically be viewed in any of a variety of layouts including, for example, a day view, a week view, a month view or an agenda view. An agenda view is typically a list of calendared events with date information, time information, and other identifying information such as subject information in the form of a table, to allow the user to quickly identify the calendared event in the list. Such an agenda is advantageous in that the user is provided with a convenient list of calendared events. This list is convenient for determining scheduled calendared events such as appointment and meetings. However, the list generally includes a start time of each calendared event and is difficult to use to determine an appropriate time of sufficient length that does not conflict with another appointment, in which to schedule new appointments or meetings. To gain a better appreciation of the user's time schedule, the user is forced to switch to a day view, for example, to more quickly determine time available. Still, it is difficult to find appropriate lengths of time in which to schedule new appointments or meetings and such switching between different views is inconvenient for the user of the portable electronic device. It is therefore desirable to provide the user of the portable electronic device with an aid for determining appropriate times for scheduling meetings.